


careful kid with that wolf whistle, you never know what you’ll attract

by sundancekid



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-19 23:16:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sundancekid/pseuds/sundancekid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the boys look at her like she should be able to <em>fix</em> things, like because she's a girl, she should be able to turn Derek's hovel into a home. Like when you get boobs, they teach you the secret of throw pillows or something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	careful kid with that wolf whistle, you never know what you’ll attract

Sometimes the boys look at her like she should be able to _fix_ things, like because she's a girl, she should be able to turn Derek's hovel into a home. Like when you get boobs, they teach you the secret of throw pillows or something.

Erica is the youngest of four, and the only girl: even before she got sick, she'd been babied and coddled. And then once she got sick — she had her first seizure at age nine — it was like she stopped growing, as far as her family was concerned. She was forever their fragile baby. Her parents never gave her any responsibility at all: no chores at home, no privileges as she got older. She wasn't allowed to drive, or play sports, or go to sleepovers. Her bedroom still had significant shelf space devoted to Barbies, was still the pale pink it had been since she was six, with floral print Laura Ashley curtains. She'd hated the room since she was twelve, but didn't know how to ask for it to be changed, and didn't know what she would have wanted in its place. The first thing she does with her new claws is shred the curtains, and then leave them there, hanging in fraying strips from the curtain rod.

So no, Erica isn't interested in being their den mother. Fuck that noise.

Because Erica never had any responsibilities, she's never had any power, either. That's what she wants, why she lets Derek bite her, why she doesn't scream and press the nurse call button when she realizes a strange man has wheeled her bed to the goddamn morgue, when he slides his hands up her calves in that creepyass way of his. He's offering her power — physical power, something she misses so much she's forgotten what it felt like to have, and with physical power, Erica knows, come other kinds of power. 

She'd had _no idea_ how much power he was giving her. Even someone who hadn't been sick, she thinks, would be shocked at the difference in their bodies, their senses, their sense of self in the world. But for her, as someone whose body had failed her, time and again, as someone who lived as much apart from physical sensation as she possibly could, because physical sensation for her was mostly pain — "transformative" doesn't even begin to describe it. To inhabit her body and _like_ it, to like the way she feels, the way she looks, the way other people react to how she looks, is like a drug.

Erica kept a mental list, of all the things she would do if she ever got the chance. All the things TV and books say teenage girls do, hot girls do. So that when her fairy godmother showed up and fixed everything for her, wiped her clean, she'd be ready, she wouldn't waste any time. Sometimes she told herself to let the list go, because it was stupid, and silly, and things like that didn't happen in real life, and she'd imagine burning it, watching the pages of her mental list turn to ash.

She was right, in a way: Derek Hale is nobody's fairy godmother. And she doesn't get wiped clean: all the shit she had to deal with, all those years, still informs her decisions. Erica knows she's being reactionary, but she really doesn't care.

So she has a list, and she sets about methodically checking things off it. Look good in a miniskirt, check. Learn to do a decent smoky eye, check. Make that bitch Lydia Martin squirm, check. Make Stiles Stilinski squirm, check.

She liked Stiles because he was sweet. More than most teenage boys, anyway. He's fragile too, in his own way, but he covers it up better, and she used to watch him sometimes, to see how he hid it.

They'd hung out some, as kids — Beacon Hills Hospital is small, and when you're there as often as Erica and Stiles were, you get to know each other. They did their homework together, sometimes.

Then Stiles' mom — who Erica had really liked; they sometimes played cards if they were both there overnight and couldn't sleep, and she never treated Erica like she was helpless — died, and he wasn't around anymore, and it seemed like he forgot about her. She tried not to take it personally — Stiles was so visibly grieving, so obviously shaken, raw and unprotected. Erica wanted to reach out to him, but didn't known how; she didn't have much experience being empathetic with other people, used as she was to everyone reaching out to her, everyone trying to understand her pain.

Stiles retreated into himself for a long time, and didn't go back to being the funny, loud class clown for over a year, and when he did, there was a sharper edge to it. Erica liked that about him, too, and wished she had an edge to protect herself the way his protected him. She wanted to be like that — to be funny, and a little bit mean about it, to know what to say. She tried, sometimes — she could think of jokes in the moment, but the words always got stuck in her throat.

She thought maybe he'd notice her eventually, because he liked smart girls — Lydia Martin was pretty, sure, but she was seriously smart, and that was what drew Stiles' interest. Erica was smart, too. She didn't get very good grades, because she was out sick so much, but she was still bright. And Stiles wasn't popular, either — it was just him and Scott McCall, and neither of them had ever dated anyone, neither one ever got off the bench during a lacrosse game. They were outcasts too. Except whatever they thought of themselves, and their place in the social galaxy of Beacon Hills High, they thought they were doing better than she was, better than the chubby epileptic girl in the baggy sweatshirts.

When she catches up to him at Boyd's house, she almost can't contain her glee at the way he studiously avoids looking at her boobs. They look great, Erica knows — her outfits these days are pretty much chosen to show off as much of them is legal. (Her parents really can't make sense of what's happening to her, but she's gone so many weeks without a seizure at this point, the longest she's gone in four years, and she leaves the house to go see people now, and her grades haven't slipped because they were only middling to begin with. About her new look, her mother sighs and says, "Well, flaunt it while you got it, I guess." Her father just reminds her about statistics on teenagers involved in car crashes.)

It's probably not fair, or whatever, to tease Stiles like that — he's a nice kid, mostly, he never did anything to her. But he never did anything for her, either, and _fair_ has never particularly interested Erica.

**Author's Note:**

> Here, have some Erica headcanon. Title comes from the Dessa song "Dutch."
> 
> Feedback and con crit welcome!


End file.
